As
Unitarian Universalists we are called by our theology and our history
to create beloved community. The work of creating community includes
deep, deliberate and thoughtful consideration of the traditions and
practices we teach and pass on. Re-thinking Thanksgiving, and the stories that are taught along with it, is an opportunity to consider some of these stories.
With
Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, we have a strong cultural narrative
repeated in many places. It goes something like this: Columbus
discovered America. Eventually, white Europeans settled here in what
we know as the Northeast, aided by Native Americans, who were
acknowledged in the first Thanksgiving celebration.
For
children, these stories are often the first stories they learn
about encounters between different cultures and races. These stories
are, by and large, narratives of “progress” and the “manifest
destiny” of white Europeans to inhabit this space. They are
full of inaccurate, racial stereotypes that do a great disservice to
Native peoples and to the actual stories.
Columbus
did not discover a land any more than Romans discovered the lands
they conquered. He committed genocide of the entire native population
he first came into contact with. Based on the stories by historians
and biographers who admired him, Columbus was brutal and cruel. Do we
really want to celebrate this story in this way? Around the United
States, many communities have begun celebrating Indigenous People's
Day instead of Columbus Day.
The
stories of European conquest and Native American resistance are far
more complex and relevant to our lives today. They are stories
of resistance and endurance and connection.
There
are stories of the Iroquois League of Nations as one of the first
examples of democracy. The peoples who became known as the Iroquois
united under a man called the Peacemaker. They continue even today to
teach these stories that speak to peace as a way to resolve conflict
and support the health of the earth and the next seven generations of
humans to come.
We
can acknowledge a troubling past as way to move forward. We can also
acknowledge that Native peoples are still here, living in towns and
cities, as well as some of their ancient ancestral lands.
In
upstate New York we have a rich heritage, thanks in part to the
Iroquois, of democracy and peacemaking. These are stories full of gratitude for the earth, the air, the water, animals and humans.
2013
marks the 400th
anniversary of the first agreement between Europeans and American
Indian Nations of Turtle Island (North America.) Recorded on the Two
Row Wampum belt, is a covenental agreement that the peoples live in
friendship, peace and in parallel, “as long as the grass is
green, as long as the rivers flow downhill and as long as the sun
rises in the east and sets in the west.”
FUSS
Religious education will be participating in the Two Row WampumRenewal Campaign: Honoring Native Treaties/ Protecting the Earth. We
can learn the stories from this land and be grateful for all that we
have here.
